Sound at the Speed of Light: The Future is "Light Peak"

In the world of data transfer cables there's about to be a new kid in town, and it's name is "Light Peak."

Forget USB 3.0 or Firewire 800, or even eSATA. This thing has the potential to blow things wide open. It is set to replace all of them and more.

Light Peak is expected to hit the street later this year. And when it does it will be able to transfer data at 10 Gbps.

According to Wikipedia:

Light Peak is Intel's code-name for a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect electronic devices to each other in a peripheral bus. It has the capability to deliver high bandwidth, starting at 10 Gbps, with the potential ability to scale to 100 Gbps. It is intended as a single universal replacement for current buses such as SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, and HDMI. In comparison to these buses, Light Peak is much faster, longer ranged, smaller, and more flexible in terms of protocol support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak

Think about that. A "universal replacement" for all of our current standard cables. That is a bold statement. And it leads to limitless possibilities.

Let's look at the video industry.

Imagine only needing to stock one kind of cable. In the near future there could no longer be a need to stock S-video, composite, component, and HDMI cables. The signal chain could be one long series of connected Light Peak cables. No need to convert and deconvert within the signal chain, just at the final output.

Then there's the file storage side of video production. Imagine being about to have your storage disks (or even PC) in another room and not having to worry about latency. This would be great for people that do narration or ADR work in a small studio. They could easily (and economically) eliminate the computer noise by placing the computer in another room.

Event Support

What about the transfer of graphics output from a PC to a projector. The cable runs are at least 30 meters with the current prototype. Who knows how long you could run a signal with a little amplification. This could have huge implications for arena size intallations or event production in general.


A/V Installation

Along the same lines, what about new computer interfaces that allow the PC to connect to the projectors over Light Peak. (Of course manufacturers like Extron would have to lead the way.) Video conference systems that used Light Peak to send video to multiple displays. Or even HDTV sent from control rooms to installed displays all around a building or even campus.

Sound Reinforcement

What if someone designed an audio system that took advantage of the technology. It could replace the standard audio cables or even twisted pair solutions. Imagine your system's audio traveling huge distances with practically no delay. Literally at the speed of light. Wouldn't Einstein be impressed? Who says you can't change the laws of physics?

Industry Acceptance

Of course all of this will rely on manufacturers creating new interfaces to leverage the cababilities of Light Peak. It will require that the equipment makers included Light Peak ports on their cameras, hard drives, etc. It will also take software companies to incorporate it into new versions of the standard tools. Plus, there will have to be drivers written to allow hardware like video cameras, hard drives, audio interfaces, displays, etc to connect to computers using this new cable.

At this point, the possiblities are endless. It remains to be seen if the technology will be accepted. With all the different formats that it attempting to replace, this could end up being another format war. However, just for the moment, it creates a clean slate for the industry and encourages the blue sky theorizing that could some day lead to sound at the speed of light.

-ARK

What's in a Name? Part 2- Industry Identity Crisis

In the process of setting up my blog, again I asked the question, "what's in a name?" This time it was in choosing the subtitle that I would use to describe what my blog was about.

Why was this so difficult? It wasn't lack of creativity. It wasn't the lack of a focused vision for what I wanted my blog to be about. It wasn't even the title, KwazyArk.com. That was a no-brainer given it's my web site. However, the issue was what to call the industry that I've worked in for over fifteen years.

So what terms describe the A/V industry? A/V, that sounds too dated. Multimedia also sounds too 90s. You could call it streaming media. Or you could call it dynamic media. That would cover most of the content that gets posted to the web. But even that's only a part of it.

What about the other side of the industry, the non-media side. There's video conferencing,web collaboration, event production and installation. How do we classify these?

It seems like the industry as a whole is going through an identity crisis. To call it "A/V" seems too old school. This is not your uncle's A/V industry. As everyone knows, IT is now a huge part of A/V. So are IP cameras, networked projectors and High Definition video conferencing. Almost anything can connect to a computer, be controlled from a computer or just is a computer. That bus left at least a few years ago. If you not on it yet, it's only a matter of time before you get run over by it.

Working with this technology, you need to be conscience of things like vlans, IP addresses, and network bandwidth. These things were almost foreign to A/V even just a few years ago. If you don't deal with these things directly, you most likely have to deal with your IT department. You need to at least have a working understanding of what those things are. This is essential so that you can speak the same language as your IT department and lobby for the technology and services that you need. With things like web collaboration and enterprise video conferencing the reliance on IT will only continue to grow

So what do we call this industry? In my mind that is still up for debate. I'm hoping that a suitable term can be found. I'd love to hear your ideas on the subject.

As for my blog, I settled on "dynamic content creatation and collaborative technologies." Maybe that will stick. ;-)


-ARK

What's in name? (With apologies to William Shakespear)

What's in a name? I asked myself that as I was setting up this blog. Google asks you right in the log in what you want to call your blog. It can be a tough decision.

What name will stick? What does it say about your subjects. What will potential followers think of it?

In the end, I decided to name it after my web site, kwazyark.com. Of course I could always change it. But, that would be another decision.

So for now let's keep it as is. Watch this space for more information on dynamic content creation and collaborative technologies.

-ARK